


We Were Just Children

by carryonmywaywardmadman (GlitterSolvesEverything), GlitterSolvesEverything



Series: Marauders Era [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: 7th year, Angst, Background Wolfstar, Build up to the first war with Voldemort, Get-Together Fic, Hogwarts Era, Multi, Pining, Snape is a dick and I stand by that, jily, lily-centric
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-02-07
Updated: 2017-06-05
Packaged: 2018-05-18 19:39:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,544
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5940697
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GlitterSolvesEverything/pseuds/carryonmywaywardmadman, https://archiveofourown.org/users/GlitterSolvesEverything/pseuds/GlitterSolvesEverything
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Oh shit I have to write one of these now</p>
<p>I'll come back to this part</p>
<p>Like they're at Hogwarts and there's a Death Eater attack at Hogsmeade and stuff happens idk man I haven't written the rest yet</p>
<p>¯\_(ツ)_/¯</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Lily rounded the corner of the corridor, fuming as she finished her round for the evening. Potter had, for the first time since they were chosen as head boy and girl, been absent for the rounds. It was exactly what she would have expected of the arrogant, self-centred prat he had been just the year before. This year, though, she had actually thought he was different.

When she found out on the train in September who her counterpart was, Lily had envisioned an endless string of immature pranks and unwelcome flirting. Potter probably hadn’t even been interested, she figured, just enjoyed the rise he got out of her that way. She’d always known she shouldn’t rise to his bait, but there was just something about the boy that had always infuriated her. She had put serious thought into resigning as head girl, but then had gotten mad at the idea that Potter would have scared her off. She was made of stronger stuff than that, and so had marched into their first evening of rounds determined that she would not come off worst in their first battle of wits.

To her bemusement, though, just like in the last term of sixth year, he had been… well, not reserved, but considerably toned-down. There had been no obnoxious displays of athletic skill, no suggestions of pranks or that they could shirk their duties and go find something more amusing to do, like each other. He’d greeted her a tad awkwardly, and then had been companionably silent for the rest of the walk. Lily had thought he might just have been having an off night, but the next day was the same, and the one after that. She had grown curious, and struck up a conversation, finding, to her gratified surprise, that he could actually be good company when he wasn’t with Black. He was intelligent, and had such an unabashed enthusiasm which made him fascinating to watch as he talked. When he got really enthusiastic, she realised, his hands would move constantly; mussing his already disgraceful hair, adjusting his glasses, gesturing wildly in the air. At one point, when they were discussing the theory that the castle had over time become semi-sentient, he had gesticulated with such enthusiasm that he’d knocked over a suit of armour. The resulting crash had drawn three running teachers, who had found Lily doubled over laughing as James grinned sheepishly. Though she’d never admit it to Amelia, let alone Marlene, she had started to look forward to spending time with him each evening. Today, after a long day’s work on her Transfiguration assignment, she had wanted to hear his anecdotes from the Hogsmeade trip she’d had to miss in order to finish the essay. Which made it infuriating that he had stood her up like this. 

Lily stalked up the staircase to the Gryffindor common room, ready to fall straight into bed. “Fandango,” she told the drowsy Fat Lady with misdirected asperity, and climbed through the hole as the portrait swung sleepily open. She smothered a yawn. 

As soon as she reached the common room, she grew more alert. Something was off. At this time of night, most of the house should be in bed, but almost all the upper years seemed to be milling about in clusters. She could hear whispers that sounded suspiciously like “Potter”. She couldn’t see him or any of his set, but figured one of their pranks had probably caused the pile-up. Lily groaned inwardly. She just hoped they hadn’t targeted the dorms. 

Marlene caught her eye and walked over. Her friend seemed tense. Lily frowned. “What-“

“There was a fight. An attack.” Her voice was terse, leaving no question about the attackers. The Death Eaters had been increasingly active, and any news of the group made Lily more unsettled than she would have cared to admit.

“What happened? Where, when?”

“At Hogsmeade today.” Marlene met Lily’s shocked look and nodded. “It was a couple of the ones who graduated last year, Goyle and the other one. Apparently they joined up the day after they left.”

Lily felt lightheaded. Hogsmeade – the thought of an attack there made the threat unbearably real.

“Did anyone die?”

“No, thank god. They don’t think it was planned, just an argument that escalated way out of hand. I think Potter’s still in the infirmary, though.”

Lily shook her head, sure she’d misheard Marlene. “Potter?”

“Yeah. Sorry, I didn’t say.”

“Is he ok?”

“I don’t know. They’re not letting anyone see him. Black’s been pacing around outside the place since they brought him back. I think that’s where the other two are, too. No one wants to go to bed in case there’s news.”

Lily was only half-aware of what her friend was saying. Her thoughts were taken up with flashing images of James in the infirmary, lying bloody and bruised and unconscious while Madam Pomfrey fretted over him. It didn’t seem like it should have been possible. They were seventeen. They were still in high school. He should have been laughing with her, throwing wet balls of snow-slush at Black and talking someone’s ear off about a strategy for the next Quidditch match. The thought of him fighting, injured – and badly, if they weren’t letting in visitors – was so alien that the world felt unsteady.

Dimly, she realised Marlene had said something. “Sorry?” she asked.

“Do you want me to send everyone to bed? Not much we can do, standing around like this.” 

Lily nodded, the image of James covered in his own blood fixed in her mind. She sank into a vacated chair, rubbing her forehead as if she could scrub the image off from the outside. She’d been so selfish, getting upset because she had to do rounds on her own, while he’d been lying in a hospital bed-

A hand touched her shoulder. She met Marlene’s eyes as the other girl knelt beside her, and pulled her into a hug. Lily breathed in shakily, then spoke, her voice muffled in her friend’s sweater.

“I need to see him.”

Lily barely registered the surprise on Marlene’s face. “You can go visit as soon as they let people in. But that won’t be tonight, ok? Come on, you need to sleep. Come on.” 

Lily let herself be manoeuvred out of the chair, and led through the vacated common room to the dormitories. She undid her bra and pulled it off from under her shirt, then lay down without bothering to change further. Her eyes pressed shut, but the image of James was plastered in front of them. Her breath sped up and tears pricked behind her eyes, panic threatening to overwhelm her. The anti-muggleborn movement, the terrorist Death Eater cult, their leader – even his name scared her – it all seemed so real and so close. In a few months, she realised, she’d lose the protection of the castle walls, and there’d be nothing to stop them from coming for her. Lily had never felt less able to be brave. She wanted to hide in her blankets and never come out.


	2. Chapter 2

Lily knew she had to focus. She'd barely managed to sleep at all last night, and she was so on edge and jittery that she'd dropped her quill three times and spattered ink all across her notes. Amelia was clearly concerned, and Marlene had tried to order her back to bed after breakfast. Lily hated worrying her friends, but she couldn't miss a full day of classes. There was barely time to learn the content for NEWTs as it was. She couldn't fall behind, even if it was impossible to cast a cheering charm with Flitwick prating on at the front like this. She tried -- frankly heroically, she thought -- to focus all through Charms. Her sodding wand was ignoring her, and Amelia's advice was useless and so condescending she could have hexed her, but she was focusing. She was. Even though a charm that only cheered people up if you felt happy and 'channelled that out into the world' while casting it was just crap, because people didn't need cheering up when they were already happy. Typical bloody condescending Ravenclaw bullshit. But she hadn't hexed anything. She hadn't thought about last night. She'd kept trying to cast the damned charm. 

One look at the cacophony of symbols blurred over the textbook page in Ancient Runes and Lily gave up. What was the point of Runes? DADA was the only useful thing they taught here. They barely learned any lasting protective spells or wards, and there was nothing in any of the syllabi for healing magic. They learned how to 'channel their happiness into the world', and about the Great Runic Shift of the 1300s. Useless. It wasn't worth learning, any of it, and there was another period before lunch. 

The instant the distant bell tower finally tolled the end of the lesson, she was on her feet and heading out of the room. Just Potions left, and she could go to the infirmary. Marlene had agreed to go with her at lunch. They weren't going to skip classes to go in the morning, because NEWTs were too important. And it wasn't like she and Potter were that close. They just had Head duties together, she was hardly going to sit at his bedside till he woke up, even though Susie McDowald, who'd heard it from her little sister Grace, who had been to see Madame Pomfrey that morning, had said his friends still hadn't been allowed in to see him and that Madame Pomfrey had seemed worried and made the little clucking noise that she did when she had to give you bad news. 

Runes was close to the Potions dungeon, so she arrived almost fifteen minutes early. As she came to the hallways near the dungeon, Lily could hear voices echoing through the old stone passageway. She could make out several of the Slytherins -- Avery, for one, had a distinctively nasal voice. She wondered why all of them were so early. It wasn't until she reached the corner into the last passageway that she could make out their words.

"No, it wasn't a severing charm, it was a new one." Avery.

"You reckon Crabbe and Goyle could have come up with a new spell? They both got Ts in OWL level Charms."

Lily froze as she realised what they were talking about. The rest of their classmates couldn't have arrived yet, or they wouldn't sound so openly, horrifyingly excited.

"Who said they came up with it?"

"You don't think-"

"They joined up, right?" Avery's voice was almost gleeful. "He must have taught them. That's real magic, that spell, better than the shit we learn here."

"No, I saw him after. All sliced open, bleeding out of everywhere." Lily made a choked noise. "I'm telling you, it was a severing charm."

"But there were lots of cuts, idiot. I'm telling you, it was new." There was no mistaking Avery's relish. "And I heard them cast it."

"What was the spell, then?" Lily closed her eyes. She knew that new voice. She'd heard it every day since she was nine.

"Sectumsempra," Avery announced triumphantly. "And it seemed like the cuts couldn't be fixed with healing magic. Rosmerta tried."

"Sectumsempra," Severus repeated. She could hear a slight smile in his voice. "Good spell for blood traitors, then."

"And mudbloods."

"Why would you want to get their filthy blood everywhere? Blood traitors have good blood; they just lose the right to keep it in their bodies. Sounds like this spell does pretty well on fixing that."

Avery laughed.

Lily couldn't breathe, couldn't think. Frantic anger was tightening her chest and if she could remember any curse other than -- than that one -- she would have cast it. She had a crazed impulse to go around the corner and pull rank as head girl, or maybe just deck them -- except she was alone. A sharp shock of bone-deep dread ran through her like ice, tamping down her anger and leaving behind panic. One muggleborn witch against at least three soon-to-be death eaters armed with a new, deadly spell they were clearly itching to use. Last night, she'd thought that the castle was all that was keeping her safe, but even that had been an illusion. All the rules of Hogwarts and of the wizarding world were frail protection without anyone to enforce them, and she was completely alone.

Lily turned slowly, every rustle of her robes sounding impossibly loud. She had to get out of there; even if she hid till Slughorn arrived and class started, there was no way she was sitting in a classroom with them. She crept along the corridor away from the dungeon, placing each foot as quietly as she could. Lily half hoped, half worried someone would come along the corridor towards Potions. She'd feel silly for being afraid once someone else was there. She knew it was paranoid, that she was overreacting. They were teenagers, they were at school. Her feet slowed. She was just tired and stressed -- she'd been stressed for months -- and it was making her irrational. There was no way they'd hurt her, not really, not at Hogwarts. 

Just like there was no way James could be bleeding out in the infirmary. 

Knowing, without deciding, where she was going, she started to run.

_______________________________________________________________

 

Remus sat slumped over, elbows on his knees and hands holding up his head, biting at the inside of his lip. He didn't know what to do with himself in the hospital wing under these circumstances. Lying still in the beds after full moon, trying not to reopen his wounds, was second nature by now. He'd visited a few times with the guys after one of them had, as James put it, 'been injured in the line of duty' (including one memorable occasion where Sirius had gotten beaten up by a bludger while streaking across the quidditch pitch during Malfoy's last game at Hogwarts). The hospital wing, ever since his friends had found out about his lycanthropy in second year, had been a place of jokes, of loud toasts to their collective brilliance, and the kind of rambunctious behaviour that normally got them thrown out by Madam Pomfrey within minutes. This time, though. This wasn't a celebration, a place to pass the time till they could go wreak more havoc somewhere else.

This felt more like a vigil. Peter was whimpering softly in a corner, occasionally wiping his eyes and nose on his sleeve. Sirius was like a trapped bludger, bursting with tight, angry energy and pacing with sharp, short steps around the room. Remus sat awkwardly, feeling too big for the space, all elbows and knees and in the way. James was motionless on the bed; a body on a bier. 

He hadn't been able to get an answer from Sirius as to what had happened. He'd missed the Hogsmeade trip yesterday -- the full moon had been three days ago, and he had needed to sleep and to catch up on classes. Peter had hared up to his room and dragged him to the hospital wing as soon as they got back, but hadn't seen what happened; he'd been in Honeydukes when the screams had started. Sirius had managed, hours ago, to spit out two names -- Crabbe and Goyle -- before resuming his tight, angry pacing. Remus hadn't seen him so tightly angry since he stopped going to his parents' house for holidays. He knew from experience that if pressed for information in this state, Sirius would start hexing people.

Remus steeled himself, and, almost unwillingly, looked at James. The bandages caught his attention first, same as when they were first allowed into the hospital wing. They seemed to cover him almost entirely, with only a few patches of his dark brown skin visible between them. Bruises discoloured what was visible of his arms, and in several places the bandages on his torso -- the ones that moved with each unstable breath -- were spotted with fresh blood. Remus's oversensitised nose could smell something astringent and woody, a poultice, he thought, as well as the distinctive lavender of a sleeping draught.

His eyes moved to James' face. Blood from a head wound had dried in his hair, congealing it on his forehead, and there was a round bruise on his cheek, clearly from a fist, not a spell -- but there were no deep cuts, no bandages. He was pale, and there was a sheen of sweat over his face and what was visible of his neck and chest, but his closed eyes were relaxed, his mouth soft and slightly open. He looked so fragile, so defenceless. Remus couldn't make the body lying there equal James, loud, generous, hilarious James. He didn't think he'd ever seen his friend so still.

There was a crash behind them as the door flew open. Remus leapt up, pulling Sirius's wand arm down before he could attack. He turned to apologise to Madam Pomfrey, but stopped short. 

Lily Evans stood in the doorway, sweaty and wild eyed. She stood on the threshold, too unsure of her welcome to come in but unable to leave. Remus met her eyes. He was confused by the near-desperate expression in them, but when it became clear she wasn't leaving, he jerked his head for her to come in. Still clutching Sirius's wand arm, he drew his friend away from the body -- no, from James, he wouldn't make him a corpse -- and made his friend face him. 

"He-" Sirius's voice gave out. Angrily, he restarted, "He can't- it's my fault, I-"

"It's not." Remus's voice was low enough that Lily couldn't hear, but he tried to sound as firm as he could. "It's their fault for cursing him. If you'd been there you would have been cursed too, and no one would have brought you both back in time. You saved his life."

Sirius had started shaking his head as Remus spoke, and he couldn't seem to stop. "I should have been there. It should be me there."

Remus grimaced. "This won't be the last fight. It could be you next time."

Sirius looked up, meeting his eyes for the first time since they got back. Remus saw his own anger and protective worry mirrored back at him, as Sirius spoke quietly: "If we're fighting this war, we fight it together. This is the last time one of us faces it alone."

Remus wanted to pull him close, to bury his face in the shorter boy's hair and shut out the world around them, but Lily was still by the bed, and he knew Sirius would have hated it if she saw. He settled for grasping his friend's shoulder.

The moment was broken by a sharp scrape of chair against stone as Lily jolted to her feet. Remus turned, questions on his lips, but she turned and half-ran out before he could speak. He rushed to James, but he seemed to be unchanged. He turned to Sirius, who looked just as confused and not a little annoyed. Remus shrugged, and sat back down in the chair. Sirius resumed his pacing. The vigil went on.

_______________________________________________________________

She considered getting up and talking to Marlene, or going back to the hospital wing and finding Remus, but couldn't even start to work out what she could say. Besides, it wasn't either of them that she really wanted to talk to.

The fundamental issue was that this was, quite clearly, exactly what she deserved.

Lily had to admit -- and, a week ago, would have done so quite cheerfully -- that she'd been an asshole to James. At the time it had all seemed like justified retribution for some slight or other. The hideously inconvenient pranks, the way he'd treated Marlene when she'd fancied him in third year, the innumerable small cruelties to Sev -- though she was starting to believe that Sev had been as much to blame as Potter for many of those -- even just his self-satisfied, cocky attitude made it feel like any retribution was fully justified. Like it was her duty, even, to take him down a peg.

He'd started asking her out in fifth year, the perfect opportunity to do so. The first time, she'd been mid-way through a tirade ("You cannot hold impromptu quidditch matches in the Common Room, Potter! Bludgers in a room with glass windows, for god's sake, and you've terrified the portraits-") when he had cut her off mid-sentence and asked her to go flying with him. She'd told him she had no interest at all in his broomstick, and had flounced out, casting tidying charms over the wrecked Common Room as she left. She had made it most of the way to the library before it occurred to her that he may not have been joking.

She didn't fancy him, Lily had decided. He was Potter, an arrogant git, who was so damn loud and, often, so damn wrong about everything that almost all they had ever done was argue. And if she'd found the speed with which he could answer her challenges exhilarating, had looked forward to them because of how fierce and sharp and awake she felt when she was with him, that didn't change anything. Asking her out was just his next move in the game between them. He was trying to throw her off balance. She wasn't going to fall for the ruse.

Sev had. So'd Marlene. They'd each brought it up a couple of times, and Lily had given them the answer they were clearly looking for. He's Potter, he's an arrogant toe rag. She didn't mention that she enjoyed how he looked at her during arguments. She barely even let herself acknowledge how much she liked that when he showed off now, it was for her. And if, as she fell asleep, her mind wandered to the possibilities if she said yes, that was her business.

It wasn't like any of her fantasies would have happened. Potter would have lost interest fairly quickly if she'd taken him up on the offer. Lily wondered, occasionally, why she didn't just do that so he'd stop bothering her, but he was never actually horrible enough for it to seem worthwhile. He even seemed to have good moments; the week after OWLs, she'd seen him comforting Remus in a hallway near Charms, and Remus had hinted around some prank Black had set up which could have actually hurt Sev if James hadn't stopped it. 

Overall, she'd been happy with how things were. Potter was loud and obnoxious and exasperating and exhilarating, and she'd made an art form of archly turning him down. She'd done so particularly cuttingly at the end of term, and during the holidays had been looking forward to resuming their game in the final term. That didn't happen; she'd been too busy. The coursework she'd been slack on for Transfiguration and Potions had suddenly caught up with her, and the news of increasingly frequent attacks had taken up the rest of her attention. It wasn't until a month in that Lily had realised Potter had not asked her out once since they got back. 

She'd mentioned it to Marlene. Casually. Not like she cared. Marlene had said how relieved she must be not to have to deal with that any more. Lily had agreed, then gone to an empty classroom and hexed an unsuspecting chalkboard into oblivion. 

She'd started going to quidditch matches. He was a good flyer, she'd had to admit. The broom went where he wanted with perfect precision, like a natural extension of his body. His hair, always a mess, reached new heights of insanity in the wind, and he yelled barely audible insults at the other team while drifting around the game looking for a glint of gold. The change was immediate when he saw the snitch; all his attention focused in, his body flattening along the broom in hard, taught lines. He caught it. Lily found herself vaguely convinced that the snitch had seen him like that and decided being caught sounded kind of great.

Another month had passed, and Potter was still being weird. Quiet. He sat at the back of classrooms with Black, and, when Black didn't show up to classes, took detailed notes. He didn't pick fights with Lily, or respond to her provocations. He didn't ask her out. Probably stressed. She'd wanted to talk to him, but realised she had no idea how to start the conversation. He'd always done that.

When she'd found out they were Head Boy and Girl, she'd figured things might go back to normal. Last term could have just been a blip, and when the school year started he'd be loud and obnoxious and hers again. She could imagine it so clearly; he'd saunter into their carriage and try to flirt, and she'd toss her hair (she'd been practicing) and they'd fight. She was so ready to be mad at him that when he was, again, quiet, and if not polite, then not actively objectionable, she wanted to cry in exasperation. Lily felt like she'd lost something, which was absurd. Their whole thing had been based around her not wanting anything he was offering, and him not caring enough about her opinion of him to stop. There was nothing to have lost.

During their rounds he was friendly. Never flirty. Which was fine, she decided; if this was James as a friend, then it was far preferable to how he'd been when he was interested in her. Friends, then.

Yesterday, when he hadn't shown up for rounds, she'd thought the old Potter -- the infuriating, arrogant git -- was back. She'd been so angry, so ready to fight with him. Being angry with Potter was brilliant. Lily had forgotten how clear and certain the world felt when she was properly mad. 

But seeing him there in the hospital wing -- asleep, frowning slightly and terrifyingly bandaged and bruised -- had shifted the world on its axis. She'd wanted to hug him, to hold him close and keep the world at bay, to watch as his eyes opened and fixed on her. With perfect clarity, she knew that was how the world, which had been tipping under her feet, would finally make sense again. 

A millisecond later, she realised with equal but unwelcome clarity that she had no right to want any of that.

He'd spent over a year trying to convince her of this, and she'd made a game of turning him down; besides, he'd long since stopped trying. He didn't want her now; she was just a girl who'd messed him around, a girl whose boundaries he'd been perfectly respectful of since last year. She wasn't the same girl she had been when he'd fancied her, either; back then, she'd been arch and laughing and fierce, and now she was so goddamn scared all the time. She had no right to even try to get him back, and no idea of where she would start. There was nothing she could do or ask of him. 

After how she'd treated him, that was exactly what she deserved. 

Lily swore violently and flopped face-down onto her bed.


End file.
